Saturday, February 26, 2022

Italian military justice: "rich in honors but poor in cases"?

Will Italian military justice be reformed? abolished? expanded? A modified Google translation of this article by Giulia Merlo in Domani notes:

In Italy, where a criminal trial lasts on average more than four years, with peaks of more than six in some particularly overburdened appellate courts, military trials are resolved within three years and with almost no prescribed crimes.

The speed is due to the fact that there is little litigation: the proceedings registered per year are just under 4000, and are managed by 58 magistrates. With the result that the military judiciary is hyper-hyper efficient as it is underutilized.

The solution would be to abolish it, but a constitutional reform would be needed, or - as the military magistrates themselves ask - reform their penal code in order to give it new powers, relieving ordinary magistrates. But the reform has been in limbo for years.

Key statistic: 4000 cases/year fort 58 judges. The author reports:

This misalignment occurs because the military judiciary -- which falls within the special judiciary together with the accounting one of the Court of Auditors and the administrative one of the Council of State -- has jurisdiction only over so-called military crimes, or only those provided for by the 1941 military penal code of peace, committed by military personnel on duty. The squad is extremely limited and not at all amalgamated with the ordinary penal code. For example: murder between soldiers of different levels is a military crime, but murder between the same rank is not, even if committed for reasons of service; intentional and not negligent injury is a military crime; embezzlement and fraud committed by military personnel are military crimes, but corruption and extortion are not.

Result: military jurisdiction is a fold of the justice system that summarizes all the criticalities. Hyper-hyper efficient as underutilized, it is considered alternatively the Cinderella of special jurisdictions because it is in fact poor of functions, or a golden place for those who enter because it is rich in honors and poor in charges. 

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